Comment by msabalau
We can see what consumers do. The Gemini app is second most downloaded app for the iPhone, right behind OpenAI. Apple is certainly not trying to "distort the picture" as you evidently wish to believe that Google is doing.
That's hardly an indication that actual "non-technical" consumers don't care, or that there is any sort of barrier to either using both apps or using whichever is better at the moment, or whichever is more helpful in generating the meme of the moment.
If it were actually true that OpenAI was "plenty good enough" for 99% of questions that people have, and that "there is no reason to switch" then OpenAI could just stop training new models, which is absurdly expensive. They aren't doing that, because they sensibly believe that having better models matters to consumers.
The average consumer has no idea what Gemini is, just ask some random people on the street or in your grocery store.
I would make a bet than if you asked 100 random people, only 10 would even know what Gemini is. I know amongst my friendship group who are all fairly technical, white-collar type educated workers, everyone uses ChatGPT, no one uses Anthropic or Gemini. I am the only one who uses all three.
The app downloads are meaningless honestly. As far as the consumer market and awareness goes OpenAI won, and I don't see anyone else getting close, which is why Anthropic is just doubling down on the coding/enterprise market.